How to iterate through table in Lua?
To iterate over all the key-value pairs in a table you can use pairs
:
for k, v in pairs(arr) do print(k, v[1], v[2], v[3])end
outputs:
pears 2 p greenapples 0 a redoranges 1 o orange
Edit: Note that Lua doesn't guarantee any iteration order for the associative part of the table. If you want to access the items in a specific order, retrieve the keys from arr
and sort it. Then access arr
through the sorted keys:
local ordered_keys = {}for k in pairs(arr) do table.insert(ordered_keys, k)endtable.sort(ordered_keys)for i = 1, #ordered_keys do local k, v = ordered_keys[i], arr[ ordered_keys[i] ] print(k, v[1], v[2], v[3])end
outputs:
apples a red 5 oranges o orange 12 pears p green 7
If you want to refer to a nested table by multiple keys you can just assign them to separate keys. The tables are not duplicated, and still reference the same values.
arr = {}apples = {'a', "red", 5 }arr.apples = applesarr[1] = apples
This code block lets you iterate through all the key-value pairs in a table (http://lua-users.org/wiki/TablesTutorial):
for k,v in pairs(t) do print(k,v)end
For those wondering why ipairs doesn't print all the values of the table all the time, here's why (I would comment this, but I don't have enough good boy points).
The function ipairs only works on tables which have an element with the key 1. If there is an element with the key 1, ipairs will try to go as far as it can in a sequential order, 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 etc until it cant find an element with a key that is the next in the sequence. The order of the elements does not matter.
Tables that do not meet those requirements will not work with ipairs, use pairs instead.
Examples:
ipairsCompatable = {"AAA", "BBB", "CCC"}ipairsCompatable2 = {[1] = "DDD", [2] = "EEE", [3] = "FFF"}ipairsCompatable3 = {[3] = "work", [2] = "does", [1] = "this"}notIpairsCompatable = {[2] = "this", [3] = "does", [4] = "not"}notIpairsCompatable2 = {[2] = "this", [5] = "doesn't", [24] = "either"}
ipairs will go as far as it can with it's iterations but won't iterate over any other element in the table.
kindofIpairsCompatable = {[2] = 2, ["cool"] = "bro", [1] = 1, [3] = 3, [5] = 5 }
When printing these tables, these are the outputs. I've also included pairs outputs for comparison.
ipairs + ipairsCompatable1 AAA2 BBB3 CCCipairs + ipairsCompatable21 DDD2 EEE3 FFFipairs + ipairsCompatable31 this2 does3 workipairs + notIpairsCompatablepairs + notIpairsCompatable2 this3 does4 notipairs + notIpairsCompatable2pairs + notIpairsCompatable22 this5 doesnt24 eitheripairs + kindofIpairsCompatable1 12 23 3pairs + kindofIpairsCompatable1 12 23 35 5cool bro